Selina Miles on directing Martha: A Picture Story

Finding her way to a film career through a love of street art, this director gives good advice to others lacking the confidence of traditional pathways.

Selina Miles, the director of this year’s festival hit Martha: A Picture Story, never set out to be a documentary filmmaker. As a young woman living in Brisbane she studied multimedia design and was interested in the visual arts, especially grafitti and the global street art movement. ‘Film never really clicked for me until I had a friend who was doing a painting in a studio and I started documenting him,’ she says on the phone to Screehub. ‘It was a lightbulb moment and I’ve been working in film ever since, finding my way through trial and error. Lots of error!’ she laughs.

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Rochelle Siemienowicz is the ArtsHub Group's Education and Career Editor. She is a journalist for Screenhub and is a writer, film critic and cultural commentator with a PhD in Australian cinema. She was the co-host of Australia's longest-running film podcast 'Hell is for Hyphenates' and has written a memoir, Fallen, published by Affirm Press. Her second book, Double Happiness, a novel, will be published by Midnight Sun in 2024. Instagram: @Rochelle_Rochelle Twitter: @Milan2Pinsk